Masquerade's Guide To Fan Fiction
by RobotKat
Summary: Masquerade takes the time to educate us all on fandom, OCs, and the physics of washing his goggles.


It was a hot summer night, with thick purple storm clouds in the air outside. The window was open slightly, bringing in some of the warm and humid air, with the young man sitting directly before it. He was of rather modest height, five-foot-seven, but his hair excelled at an additional twelve inches.

He rotated in his chair, facing a non-existent home audience. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Masquerade."

Masquerade got to his feet and paced. "You may not remember me, since my last appearance was early on in the second season." He walked up to a desk and rested his foot on the seat of its chair. "I used to be the series' token bishounen until all those Vestroians showed up. Every one of those boys can be paired with another! Even Zenoheld and Clay!"

Masquerade hesitated for a moment. "No, I'm not sorry. Thank you for asking. Now, here's a little about myself for you newcomers…I like creeping up on small children, mint chocolate, and doing _this_."

He slipped off his goggles, suddenly transforming into a fourteen-year-old ginger girl. Alice looked around, panicking.

"W…wasn't I just in the grocery store?" She asked, noting the gothic furniture around her. Her arm moved up robotically and returned the goggles to her face, soon morphing back into the blonde young man.

"This gets sort of annoying when you have to wear it all through summer, you know. Try taping Plexiglas to your face in August." Masquerade returned to his chair. "Worse yet, you can't even wash off that sweat properly, or you'll turn into what we in the anime world delicately call a 'Loli'. In short, to save Alice and myself the embarrassment, I've had to find interesting other ways to wash myself."

In the meantime, Hal-G slipped through a wall and into his kitchen, only to find water dripping down the counter and along the floor, from where Masquerade had previously stuck his face in the sink.

"Son of a _bitch_!" Hal-G croaked.

Back in the parlour, Masquerade had pulled the chair up to a nearby computer and was now going onto the Internet. "See, you only find out about weird things like that on a little tool called 'fan fiction'. Either you get engaging stories that embellish the characters while sticking to the series canon, or you get stories of people making out with everyone. Fun times! I've lurked on this site for quite a long time, and seen every single type of story possible…"

Serious now, he turned to the non-existent camera. "Why hasn't anyone written a story where my hair gets let down? Your bishounen radars would explode from the sheer wonder of my hair when it's not up like this. Ever since Shun cut his, I've had the longest hair of anyone in this show."

In the meantime, Gus Grav burst into tears, grabbing defensively at his silky blue locks. Spectra hurried to comfort him, which turned into heavy necking, and then someone wrote a story about it.

"Let's explore, shall we?" Masquerade clicked on the purple drop-down boxes at the top of the page, specifically the character boxes. He clicked on a certain two names and then the 'Go' button.

_No entries found for Mira + Mylene P. Note: M rated entries are not displayed by default._

Masquerade hesitated, switched the rating box to 'M' and sat back. Nothing again.

"Disappointing…that would've been pretty hot."

He became aware of the non-existent home audience's presence and jolted back.

"Oh! Whoa! I'm sorry about that. Anyways, let's try that with some random names, shall we? Fangirls are a strange breed, so there's no idea what to expect…"

_No entries found for King Zenoheld + Marucho M. Note: M rated entries are not displayed by default._

"That could've been awful, but I'm glad that didn't turn up anything. Let's try this one more time…"

_Dan + Shun: 38 found: Page 1, 2_

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is what the yaoi base used to all be. Everything's like this…" He pointed to a story summary, which contained _"Shun has a secret he hasd to tiell Dan REVIEWS PLEASE BOY ON BOY ALERT!"_

"All the younger fangirls go after Dan and Shun, but as they get older, their tastes mature…well, not really mature, I guess…and they get into more exotic things. Like Clay and Zenoheld." He sat back with a laugh. "I once read an Alice and Runo fiction…the chapters were all in lowercase and only a few sentences long. Then the girls took off their clothes, the author demonstrated his limited knowledge of intercourse, and then Runo's dad walked in. But hopefully these fanboys mature and get into higher female pairings…" He sat up, raging. "Mature! _Now_! I want to read about Mira making out with Mylene!"

Hal-G faded in through the wall, glaring. "Not until you clean my kitchen."

"Not until _you_ find a better way for me to keep form, other than these glasses!"

Hal-G hissed at him and moved away.

Masquerade sat back in front of the computer. "Now, some stories torture characters for the sheer sake of writing drama. Shun goes to the hospital for a broken heart and Chutley Disease. Alice is aware that I am her and she doesn't move for three weeks. Marucho's magical made-for-this-story sister dies in a spaceship crash. I mean, look at what you get if you search my name…Runo dies of cancer! Dan has a twin brother! I take—"

His eyes stopped on one story. It was a fiction where Masquerade molests Dan. Masquerade sighed.

"If I smoked, I'd probably light a cigarette and sit back, take a drag, and then say something cool with a Chicago brogue. But I'm not. I need to talk to you about the OC."

He stood up and walked over to a closet. "An OC is an Original Character, also known as My OC Do Not Steal Or I'll Hurt You Five Exclamation Marks. Here's a sample one…"

He opened the door and a blonde girl stepped out. She had long, shimmering golden hair and eyes that always changed colour and contained a deep, hidden sorrow. She wore a bright blue blouse with yellow stripes on the sleeves, and a black undershirt beneath that. She had a pink mini-skirt and black leggings underneath, with knee-high stockings and bright green sneakers. She had an aura of maturity around her.

"My name's Tierra Geri Takamizawa," she said with a silky voice.

"This is the worst example of an OC you can get," Masquerade said, kneeling down to be face to face with Tierra Geri Takamizawa. "Young lady, tell me about yourself."

"I'm very introverted, I brawl Darkus, and my father died in a car accident and my stepmother is a drunk. I love Shun but Ace loves me, and Shun loves _that stupid Alice_!"

"This is another thing about Shun fans," Masquerade said to where he now thought the camera was. "They hate Alice to bits. She can easily be paired with Shun and is two years older than him, and they take to this with _rage_. Like, how dare Alice be in the way of Tierra Geri Takamizawa's passionate romance with Shun!"

"How dare she!" Tierra Geri Takamizawa hissed.

"That's enough," Masquerade said coolly, pushing Tierra Geri Takamizawa back into the closet. "You can continue distorting the show's timeline canon later."

"Good, I want to mope to myself for a while."

And he shut the door with a sigh.

"So, kids…what have we learned today?"

Nothing answered.

"That's right…the younger the fangirl, the crazier. Some never grow out of their habits, however." He sat back down and opened up a writing program. "Fans are all diverse and crazy people who do crazy things. No one is better than anyone else! A yaoi fangirl and an angst writer are on the same level. A Tierra Geri Takamizawa and a Laura Mitchie Yumiro are equals. We're all keepers of one fandom, and we need to be nice to each other and work off one another's influences. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

The next day, a short drabble appeared on the website.

_Into A Tailspin by Mask R. Ade: Mira finally confronts Mylene, preparing for battle, but Mylene's hidden passions drive the two to another world. Rated M for yuri._

"That looks ridiculous," Alice said with a sigh. She clicked around for a moment and stopped. "Wait, what? Why hasn't 'Just A Little Girl' updated since February?"

Fin

*Note: Tierra Geri Takamizawa's last name comes from that of a character in the 2004 series Tetsujin 28, which is pretty hard to find but contains the most horrifically-irritating anime woman ever. She's a tsundere, a shotacon, and somehow manages to jerk around the best character on the show, Kenji Murasame. (Seriously! You guys would love him to bits too, if the show were mainstream!) It's more an inside joke that I'd include her name.

**Note again: I desperately want to finish Just A Little Girl! I don't watch Bakugan much these days, and it's sort of hard to get back into the first season's atmosphere. (Bakugan kind of reminds me of Sailor Moon these days. Seasons upon seasons are coming out, it's mostly popular in Canada, its universe is expanding to insane levels, and the fan fiction is wacky.)


End file.
